Sometimes you can do Shakespeare and you're still not an actor.

But what I've also really liked about it is that it not only has Marvel set about... if they just were slavishly trying to bring the comic books to life, literally, I don't the movies would work, because it's different to see something on screen in three dimensions with actors, and they kind of, I believe, are constantly trying to find a way to absolutely respect the source material and at the same time, transform it into something that works and that you believe on screen.

I think about it, and I realize there's been some version of a Batman or Spiderman or Superman franchise since I was a boy, since before I was a boy.

What I think is incredible about what Marvel has done and with Jon Favreau I think really maybe helped come up with, is what the template is.

No matter how tight the shot is, if I'm narrating it too much, there's a barrier between you and the experience, because the process of reading a book, or watching a movie, or watching a play is that you're watching a dream.

I had worked in this New York theatre company for my first eight or nine years out of college, acting and directing there, and I'd begun to write a little bit.

I'm just an actor who happened to love these [Marvel] comics when I was a kid, and got to rediscover them.